Clutching her son to her hip in the Caribbean sunshine, these are the paparazzi pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge and Prince George that caused controversy when they were published with the tacit approval of Kensington Palace.

The photographs were taken last month when the Duchess and her family took Prince George on his first foreign holiday, to the island of Mustique, to celebrate Carole Middleton’s birthday.

They were the first pictures of Prince George since his christening last October, and were taken by a freelance photographer who has released them to the media at large.

Their original publication by Hello! magazine last week highlighted the dilemma faced by the Royal family over long-lens pictures taken without their approval, about which they have often complained in the past.

The magazine published the pictures, taken as the Duchess changed flights on the island of St Vincent, after Kensington Palace indicated she would be unlikely to complain about them.

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Several media lawyers questioned whether the Duchess was exercising “image control” by picking and choosing when to complain, rather than defending her privacy outright.

Kensington Palace took exception to the lawyers’ views, saying in a letter to The Daily Telegraph that its position was “clear and unchanged” and that members of the Royal family had a right “to go about their day-to-day private lives without constantly being pursued, photographed and published”.

The Duchess has previously complained about pictures of her in a bikini on Mustique while pregnant and shopping at her local supermarket when she and her husband lived in Wales.